


The Gods We're Meant To Be

by catalyticGenesis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Sburb, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, but trying, not doing so well, theres plenty more i just dont want to add tags before they show up in the story, theyre trying not to be dysfunctional family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8024716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalyticGenesis/pseuds/catalyticGenesis
Summary: The Ultimate Reward is only given to those who play Sburb perfectly, not a single flaw in the process. Unfortunately, that's nearly impossible, and now all the survivors of the latest Sburb session are struggling to deal with the non-standard game over.





	1. Chapter 1

             Rose woke up with a pounding headache. This in itself was not unusual, but something else was off. She slowly sat up, realizing that she was in her own bed for the first time in three years. Her own room.

             This was when she knew something was terribly wrong. They had won the game, hadn’t they? They were supposed to be gods, not mortals. She reached a hand up to the back of her head, expecting to pull down her familiar (if somewhat annoying) soft fleece hood. All she felt was the back of a properly-executed pixie cut, which she also hadn’t felt in three years. Trolls weren’t all that great at cutting hair, and Dave was no better. She had let it grow out almost to her shoulders. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she stood up.

             Almost immediately, she felt terribly off-balance. Something was off with where her center of gravity was. It was almost as if she had gotten shorter. She shakily made her way over to the mirror and looked into it.

             Her thirteen year old self stared back at her.

             Well, shit.

             It seemed like they hadn’t quite fulfilled the conditions for the Ultimate Reward, but had still triggered the completion flags of Sburb. So the game had given them a non-standard game over- a full reset of their universe. They were back where they started.

             Just to confirm, she ran her hands over her stomach, where there should have been a scar from her first death. Nothing. She lifted her shirt to visually confirm (because maybe, just maybe she had somehow been wrong the first time) and her stomach was smooth and free of scars. Upon closer inspection, she noticed a small lighter patch of skin (perhaps a strange birthmark- even though she had never been truly born). It was right where the scar from Jack’s sword would have been, and as she turned around to check in the mirror, there was a matching mark from the exit wound. Well, that was a confirmation of sorts. The scars of the game weren’t truly gone, which meant that not everything was exactly the same.

             Glancing at her outfit, she realized she was wearing the same squiddle shirt from three years ago. That wasn’t her anymore. She stumbled over to her closet, gaining confidence with each step. At least she hadn’t grown too much during their meteor trip, if she had, she’d never adjust. Her mind slipped to the height of a certain Dave Strider, who had skyrocketed from 5’3” to 5’8” in three years. Teenage boys. She was sure this would put a serious dent in his ninja-type flashstepping skills, if he even kept them. It had become unclear which skills were truly theirs and which skills could be attributed to the gods they had become.

             Her closet was mostly the same, many blacks and dark purples, but she noticed a splash of color in the back of her closet. She reached for it, nearly falling in her eagerness. A comfortable yellow hoodie with a bright vermillion hood and a familiar symbol in bright yellow on the front. Her god tier outfit, but not quite. When she pulled it off the hanger, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Cautiously, she grabbed it and read it.

             “Thanks for playing”, it stated.

             So then Sburb was truly over, and this wasn’t just some crazy Groundhog Day type loop.

             If she had mentioned that to Dave, he would have scolded her because that’s not how time travel works, and then launch into a complicated metaphor that would invariably get out of hand.

             She pulled off her squiddle shirt and put the hoodie directly over her bra. This was better than before. The Light hoodie reminded her of who she should be, while the squiddle shirt reminded her only of her younger, arrogant, and emotionally distant self. Looking down, she realized she was wearing leggings and ridiculously bright blue fuzzy socks. Kind of like her god tier shoes. She decoded to keep this outfit on for the time being.

             In the distance, she heard a shrill scream she knew didn’t belong to any of her house’s occupants. She stepped out of her room, looking for the source of the scream. She almost stepped into the room next to hers (that certainly hadn’t been there three years ago), but decided there was nothing in there. Letting her intuition guide her, she ran (slowly and clumsily, but still ran) to an unfamiliar area of the house. This hadn’t been there three years ago. Carefully, she reached to open a door she had never seen before. It slowly swung open to reveal a young teenager sitting on the carpet next to a fallen bookshelf.

             “Hey there,” Dave said in a voice that was a little higher-pitched than she was used to hearing from him.


	2. Chapter 2

          After a moment’s pause, he continued speaking. “I kinda fucked up and now there’s books and shit all over the place.” He gestured around the room, and Rose nearly laughed. Only Dave Strider could act as calm as this in the face of having reset to thirteen years of age. Her intuition tells her that he’s freaking out inside, but his coolkid act is preventing him from showing this.

          “So you’ve experienced the shift of balance that stems from shrinking five inches?” Rose gently sat down next to him.

          He exhaled almost dismissively, although she swore can hear a slight fear behind it. “Nah, the mess is from my sicknasty stunts. I got out of bed like any other morning, and the shelves were all like ‘oh shit this is too cool for us’ and promptly keeled over dead. Guess I can’t have shelves anymore. Gotta keep all my stuff in dressers like some kinda nerd. What, am I gonna have to start wearing a pocket protector now? Big thick glasses?” He’s rambling.

          “Dave,” Rose interrupted.

          “Am I gonna have to turn in my coolkid license card? Wait, when are we gonna get our licenses? Seems a little overdue at this point, considering that we’re literally gods but we can’t even drive. ‘Oh look, there goes the Great Knight of Time riding the public bus. Oh, and there’s the Seer of Light on the metro, and that asshole Heir is just flying everywhere ’cause he can do that. Kinda sad that these literal gods are on public transportation, ’cause they never got their permits. Hella lame gods if you ask me’. People are gonna laugh, Rose.”

          “Dave,” she repeated.

          “Are we gonna have to go to school? We beat a murder game and died at least twice, but we still gotta go to school every day cause surprise, we forgot how to do math! Rose, we’re going to have to take calculus.”

          “Dave!” she said a final time, and caught his attention. “How old are you?”

          He laughed. “Sixteen, same as always. Guess it’s closer to sixteen and a half now, ’cause we were thirteen and a few months when Sburb started. We’re gonna being going into what, tenth grade? Eleventh? Is it still April thirteenth? Wait, shouldn’t we be in school right now? Oh wait, I guess the murder game must have given us a little leeway for once.” His questions still come out flat, a strange quirk of his dialect.

          “Have you looked in a mirror since waking up?”

          Dave nearly snorted, which tells her he’s aware something is wrong. He only shows that he’s capable of anything but a deadpan expression when something isn’t right. “’Course not. How do I know it’s not gonna pass out from the sight of my face, like those poor shelves did when they saw how cool I was? Mirror’s gonna be blushing and swooning all over and it’s not gonna give me a good reflection. I don’t wanna see myself looking like a funhouse mirror.”

          Rose sighed deeply. Her brother’s method of dealing with problems consisted of one step: ignoring the problem. “You are aware that the universe was more or less reset back to April thirteenth, two-thousand nine? Everything, including its occupants? And unless density to things other than relationships is a trait you’ve picked up in the few minutes I’ve left you unobserved, then you certainly know what’s going on.”

          He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and turned his head slightly away from Rose. She took this as his way of saying yes, and proceeded to offer him a hand in getting up. After a second’s hesitation, he accepted, and let her pull him to his feet. Rose is able to stare directly through his sunglasses, and he quickly shifts his focus to right behind her.

          “So we’re back to being the same height. At least this time I know I’m gonna outclass you in a few years, instead of the fear that my little sis’d be taller than me. Oh shit, what if ectobiology fucked up our genes more and you end up growing three feet? Not taller, but you just gain three more feet. Oh there goes Rose Lalonde, with all five of her feet. She was supposed to be a god but then green slime fucked her up. Why you shouldn’t clone babies with dubious green sludge, paradoxes aren’t all that healthy for the body. You know what else is bad for humans? Dying, which we’ve all done at least three times. Think that’s gonna have any negative effects?”

          Dave was still rambling, but Rose had stopped paying attention. If Sburb had reset the entire universe, what had that done to her coplayers? Were the post-scratch players on Alpha Earth, and if so, were her mom and Dave’s bro alive again? Had the trolls been returned to Alternia, and had any of their lives been restored? What had become of the sprites? And the universe they created. What had become of that? It would be a shame to have a perfectly good Genesis Frog go to waste on account of not completing the session perfectly, but perhaps that was the type of thing Sburb would do. Actually, she was pretty sure Sburb would do that just to mess with them.

          “And we’re all just a circus sideshow instead of the gods we’re meant to be. What a rip-off,” he concluded. It was rare for one of Dave’s metaphors to end on its own, but she assumed it had gone through all of its ordained non-sequitur topic changes, and he had finally made the point he set out to make. Presumably. Well, at least he was done.

          “I am going to be heading back to my room to try to wrap my head around this; do you care to join me?” Rose knew as well as Dave did that her asking was a simple formality, as he had very little choice in the matter. She began walking out of the room, waiting for Dave to join her.

          “Some quality sibling bonding time over existential dread; sounds right up my alley,” he said, falling into stride beside Rose. Or at least attempting to, as his recent loss of height left him struggling for balance. She laughed softly at his struggles, knowing his pleas for help weren’t genuine.

          Very little of the house seemed to be exactly as it was three years ago, and the route they took to return to Rose’s room didn’t seem to be quite the same route she took to get to Dave’s room. The things being out of the house could do to one were incredible.

          When they arrived at the door to her room, Rose noticed that the door right next to it was gone. For some reason, this didn’t bother her, although architecturally, it should have.

          Upon entering the room, there were some definite changes, such as the addition of many Complacency of the Learned posters (where one would get these, she didn’t know, as they were unpublished), a large pile of cat plushes, and, to Rose’s utter horror, a bunk bed.

          Well, that certainly hadn’t been there before. And the other additions looked…tackily familiar. Almost like something her mom would have done.


	3. Chapter 3

          When Rose pondered the recent developments to her room, it all clicked into place the second she heard the new occupant’s voice.

          “Heya, so I think the world forgot I existed, and now there’s just one room between the two of us, my dear daughter/younger sister/whatever ecto-slimey relation you wanna use.” When she spoke, Roxy leaned over the top bunk, glancing down at her two sort-of children. After a second of examination, she exclaimed, “Oh my god, y’all are like twelve! How the hell’d that happen?”

          Dave adjusted his posture to a slightly more vertically inclined slouch before speaking. “Sburb must’ve fucked with our ages ’cause it decided it hadn’t fucked us over enough already. We were having too much fun being sixteen and all, being legally allowed to have our licenses and jobs and all that other shit, even though the Earth wasn’t a thing. But Sburb didn’t care, so here we are, thirteen and whatever months.”

          “At least you can sign up for Tumblr without being dishonest about your age this time. And Instagram, or whatever hipster-type social media you’re into now that you’re thirteen. Are you going back to Neopets? I’ve heard their economy is at a good point. And unfortunately, I don’t think that strange dream bubble network exists anymore. A shame, as your ramblings were quite hilarious, if rather dense.”

          “Shit, do you think my Tumblrs still exist? Is it two-thousand nine again? Are my blogs still active, or is that shit a relic of the past now? Oh man, is Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff a thing again? I’m remaking it into Sweet Karkat and Hella Karkat. It’s just Karkat yelling the whole time. Hilarious. Anyways, I gotta check my social media so I can go back to being a cool thing again. Or ironic. Or ironically cool, or cool-y ironic. Is that even a word? Who cares, I’ve got to make eight hundred pages of Sweet Karkat and Hella Karkat.” Dave reached in his pocket to grab his phone, but found it wasn’t there. After a few seconds of contemplation, he stumbled over to Roxy’s laptop and hit the power button.

          “So, as things seem to be generally reset to the beginning of our timeline, aside from obvious bumps such as your existence, where the fuck did the Complacency of the Learned posters come from? Did I miss out on the joys of writing them? How unfortunate. I suppose I must create the sequels, or write poorly worded fanfiction, or whatever it is that young teenage girls do for entertainment.”

          “Mom, what’s your password?” Dave yelled from the other side of the room.

          “My favorite child!” she shouted back. “Anyways, I’ve still got all my rad-ass hard copies, and they’re in new condition again ’cause idk how literate I was at thirteen, so I guess I hadn’t gotten my grubby hands all over that shit yet. Fun fact: lil’ me was a fuckin’ dumbass.”

          “Mom, the password isn’t my name. I think you just caused some deep-seated abandonment issues that are gonna bite you in the ass big time later. ‘Why are you still living in the basement, Dave? You’re thirty-two?’ you’ll ask. ‘Why don’t you love me, Mommy,’ will be my reply. All sorts of fucked up shit’s gonna ensue, and it’s all your fault for not loving me as much as this smartass horror you call a daughter. Well, guess what: you’re only my second favorite parent.” He turned his head away in a childish display of petty irritation.

          Roxy pondered this statement for a second, before declaring, “Neither of you dumbasses are my favorite child. It’s Frigglish, obvs.”

          Rose leaned forwards, a smug grin on her face. “Frigglish, who was my cat Jaspers, who went on to become my sprite, who proceeded to fuse with me? Technically, that means I’m your favorite child. Suck it, Strider.”

          “Dave Elizabeth Strider, go to your room and check on your bro-dad immediately!” Roxy yelled in her best approximation of a Mom Voice.

          He froze, an expression of fear almost betraying his trademark deadpan look. “Hold the fuck up, is Elizabeth my actual middle name?”

          Roxy nodded smugly, and when Rose laughed, she continued, “Don’t get too cocky, young lady. I’ll happen to let you know that your full name is legally Rose Strudel-Lalonde.”

          At this, Dave let loose one of his rare half-smiles.

          “May I ask why part of my last name is a breakfast pastry? Is my father actually Mr. Strudel, not Dirk Strider?”

          “Well, I was drunk and messaging Calliope, and she let it slip that I might be having kids one day. Of course I assumed that Dirk was gonna be the dad cause, y’know, last humans on earth and all, and started thinking about names. Your name was gonna be Rose Strider-Lalonde but I was drunk, so your name is Rose Strudel-Lalonde. Misspellings and all. Also I asked Dirk what he’d name his kid if he had one, and he immediately responded Dave Elizabeth Strider, so that’s you.”

          Dave looked somewhat betrayed at this reveal, while Rose was deep in thought. She hoped that those weren’t still their legal names, as while as hilarious as they may have been, explaining to law practitioners why her middle name was Strudel would have been quite an ordeal. Or perhaps it was a hyphenated last name, as punctuation doesn’t translate all too well though the medium of spoken word.

          After a while, Rose spoke up again. “On the topic of children, I do believe that during the doomed timeline where Davesprite originated, we had a discussion on children. At this point, we were both heavily intoxicated and wondering what would happen if we ever had children. I was still somewhat bitter with my mother, and decided that if I had the chance, I’d name my daughter Roxy Jaspers Lalonde after my lovely cat, and Dave said he’d name his son after his brother’s legacy- Dirk Catshits McGee Strider.”

             “Well, we’ve all got fucked up names, but my statement stands: Dave Elizabeth Strider, go to your room to find your father, Dirk Catshits McGee Strider!”


End file.
